


Musings of an Existential Crisis

by MissGryffindor



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 07 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 12:44:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15143354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissGryffindor/pseuds/MissGryffindor
Summary: Jon Snow tries to begin piecing together his identity after discovering the truth of his parentage.





	Musings of an Existential Crisis

**Author's Note:**

> A few thoughts that came to me during a morning commute and somehow turned into a fic.

Jon stood in front of _her_ statue and tried to find himself in her stone features.  Bran said he had his mother’s look, back in that room, when Jon had asked how fath – _Lord Stark_ had managed to hide a Targaryen from Robert for so long.  Five words that changed Jon’s life and sent his head into a spin.  Five words that set him to wondering who he was and where he had come from.  _Because you look like her_. 

They’d played in the crypts a few times as children.  If he closed his eyes, Jon could remember the time Robb had persuaded him to take some flour from the kitchens and hide in one of the empty tombs.  He’d jumped out and scared Sansa and Bran.  Not Arya, though.  Not his little sister.  Jon snorted.  Cousin, he supposed she was, really. 

He was filled suddenly with a massive sense of loss. 

It was as if he had found and lost his mother in the same moment.  As a child he had dreamed of a high-born woman with kind eyes.  As an adult, _after Ygritte_ , he had known that it was likely his mother was a woman met fleetingly on campaign.  Jon had fought his feelings for her as long as he could, but in the end had given in – as he had supposed his father must have.  Jon had come to accept they would never meet.  That he would never know her name. 

Now, Jon felt as if he perhaps knew too much.  _You know nothing, Jon Snow_.  But perhaps ignorance did have a sense of bliss to it.  He had found and lost his mother.  He had not long found Arya and Bran again, but he had lost them too in a manner of speaking.  As he had lost Sansa.  He had no living brothers and sisters, only cousins.  Rhaegar’s other children had been killed at the end of the war. 

“ _Love is the death of duty_ ”, Jon murmured softly.  He understood that even more now.

He’d understood it first the morning he’d stood on the edges of that makeshift camp near Queenscrown and known he could leave undetected.  Jon hadn’t left.  He had lain back down next to Ygritte and wrapped his arms around her under their furs.  Within minutes she had woken and Jon was inside her. 

Jon had understood it again on the boat to White Harbour with Daenerys.  As he got to know her better during those sweet nights where they lay entangled among her silky sheets both sweaty and naked, emotionally and physically bare, talking and coupling.  And Jon had known he would do whatever it took to protect Daenerys. 

He had shouted down the voice inside him that wanted to do as Euron Greyjoy had suggested at the Dragonpit.  The voice that wanted to take Daenerys, and Sansa, and Arya, and Bran as far away from Westeros as they could go. 

_They were meant to be together_. 

He thought of everything Lord Stark had done, all the lies he had told.  He thought of Daenerys, forced to flee into exile.  He had gone north to Castle Black and beyond while she travelled east across Essos.  Those loyal to him had all but built his funeral pyre and she had walked into one.  In spite of all that, they had found each other anyway.  In the ancestral home of House Targaryen. 

Maybe they had been meant to find each other.  Maybe they’d been heading towards each other their entire lives.  That’s what the Red Woman would say, were she here.  And, as he thought of the old man’s face, perhaps Maester Aemon would too.  Jon recalled the words he’d once overheard him say to Sam. 

_A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing._

What was the old saying?  Blood called to blood.  And she made his _sing_. 

As much as he knew there were those in the Seven Kingdoms who would call what they’d shared an abomination, it was somewhat difficult for him to see it that way.  When Jon had walked into that vast room at Dragonstone, he had not met his _aunt_.  He had met _Daenerys_ , a young, beautiful and passionate woman who had beguiled him from the moment his eyes caught hers. 

Jon had been in love before.  He knew what it felt like.  He knew it halted for no man, nor for any sense of right or wrong.  Loving Ygritte had been a betrayal of his vows and his brothers, but Jon had loved her regardless.  He couldn’t stop loving her just because it was _wrong_.  Nor could he Daenerys. 

One thought rang through the mist clouding his mind – he still loved Daenerys.  He still _wanted_ Daenerys.  He still wanted to hear her moan his name as he tasted her.  He still wanted to feel the scratch of her nails down his back when he was buried deep inside her sweet, wet cunt.  He still wanted to cup those beautiful breasts that seemed to sit just so in the palm of his hand. 

Perhaps he was a true Targaryen after all. 

Jon’s mind drifted back to his childhood and his desperate, unspoken wish to be a Stark.  To be true-born.  To never again be the _Bastard of Winterfell_.  Well, he thought bitterly.  He’d gotten part of that wish, at the least.  He was the true-born son of a Stark.  Just not Lord Eddard.

He raised a hand to his mother’s statue again and touched her outstretched, stony palms.  Between the stone and the setting she felt so cold.  To Jon, the idea of a mother had always been a warm one.  But Lyanna hadn’t been warm since the day of his birth.  In Dorne.  Gods, but Dorne?  Jon wondered where else he had unknowingly been. 

She had run the full length of the Seven Kingdoms to escape a marriage she did not want.  Jon thought of Sansa’s husbands.  Tyrion and Ramsay.  His sister – cousin, now, Jon reminded himself – had been sold off, as Daenerys once had, but his mother had escaped that.  Having seen Robert at Winterfell – a Robert he had failed to match up to the friend his f- _Lord Stark_ had spoken of – Jon could not censure her desire to make her own choices. 

Arya would not have submitted meekly to being sold off.  From what he had seen and heard since returning to Winterfell, Jon suspected Arya would cut an unwanted husband’s throat before he could lay a finger on her. 

Sister.  _Cousin_ , Jon corrected himself.  He supposed he’d need to become accustomed to that distinction.  And to think, he’d felt so hurt as a child when Lady Catelyn had called him their _half_ -brother.  He thought of her now.  She’d been lied to just as much as he had. 

Lord Stark had lied to them all.  The logical part of Jon’s brain told him it had been to protect him.  The logical part of his brain reminded him that Robert, the man whose first act upon visiting Winterfell was to visit Lyanna’s tomb, would’ve had him killed.  Her blood alone would not have saved him, contaminated as it was – in Robert’s eyes – by that of Rhaegar. 

The other part of Jon’s brain, though, the part which was clouded by his emotions…..the only words he could bring to his mind were those he’d uttered to Sam all those years ago, when they’d discussed Robb and the Red Wedding _.  I wanted to hate him, but I never could_. 

Jon was angry.  Angrier than he’d ever felt at any of his family.  He hated that he’d been lied to.  He hated that he’d never even known the name his mother gave him.  Lord Stark had never even told Jon of his mother’s death.  He had allowed Jon to grow up with the hope that they might one day meet.  That one day, his mother might hold him as Lady Catelyn did Robb and Sansa and the rest of them. 

“ _You lied to me_ ”, Jon gritted out through his teeth in the direction of Lord Stark’s statue.  “You told me we’d see each other again and speak of my mother.  You let me believe she might still be alive.”

But that wasn’t what hurt the most, when he’d heard Bran say those five words.  “You let me believe I was _your son_.”

Jon thought back to what he’d told Theon at Dragonstone.  “ _You don’t need to choose.  You’re a Greyjoy, and you’re a Stark_.”  It had been so easy to say those words then.  Now they filled his throat with bile and choked Jon.  He’d never been a Stark, not truly.  But he didn’t know how to be a Targaryen either.  He didn’t want to be one. 

_Bastard of Winterfell_.  Jon had once thought of that title with disdain.  Now he craved it with all his being; he craved being Ned Stark’s son again.  Aegon Targaryen was a name for silver princes raised in the Red Keep or at Dragonstone.  Even if it was one his mother had given him with her dying breath. 

Jon had always thought if he ever met his mother he’d know what to say to her.  But what could he say to a statue?  _The dead don’t hear us_.  Who had said that to him once?  Tormund, he thought.  After his own death Jon had understood the truth in those words. 

Lyanna, his mother, was in the darkness now.  Where he had once been.  Nothing he said or did could reach her there. 

Looking between her statue and that of Lord Stark, the man who had raised him, had Jon as confused as he had been when Bran started to weave his little tale.  He didn’t know who he was any longer.  The Bastard of Winterfell had never truly existed.  His life had been a mummer’s farce and Jon didn’t know how to play out the truth. 

_You know nothing, Jon Snow_.  Ygritte’s words had never felt so apt.

Jon tried to think on what he did know.  He knew he wanted Daenerys as much as he had that morning, when they’d woken in their camp and he’d taken her twice before Missandei came to rouse them.  He knew he still felt a Northman.  He’d lived in the North all his life.  _I serve the North_.  And he knew the Night King was still coming for them all. 

Jon snorted.  The Night King.  Possibly the only being in the North who wouldn’t care if he was a Stark or a Targaryen or a Snow.  He could still recall Lord Royce’s words from before his trip to Dragonstone.  _A Targaryen cannot be trusted_.  Of course, Royce would remember the Rebellion well.  He must’ve fought alongside Lord Arryn. 

A war started simply because two people ran off together and left the rest of the world behind.  Jon thought of all those lost.  Rhaegar and Lyanna both dead.  Uncle Brandon and his grandfather – both burned alive by Jon’s other grandfather.  Rhaegar’s other children and their mother.  Rhaegar’s mother.  Jon might uncomfortably share blood with the man, but he still didn’t consider the Mad King a terrible loss. 

All those times he’d been judged harshly simply for being Ned Stark’s bastard.  Jon wondered how he’d fare as being the Mad King’s grandson.  Thousands dead, simply because two people ran off together. 

After they’d climbed the Wall, as he’d held Ygritte in his arms and gazed out at the North, a fleeting thought had passed through Jon’s mind that they could run off together and leave behind Tormund’s crew.  He’d be a deserter in truth then.  But he’d have her.  It had only been a fleeting thought, a vision of the two of them somewhere warm.

But Jon had been raised by Ned Stark, and so the thought came unbidden and went a fraction of a second later.  How different would things be if they had done that?  Would Ygritte still live?  Would he?  But, if he had done that, Jon might never have met Daenerys. 

He wondered if they’d get on, had they ever met.  Jon saw Ygritte’s fiery passion and determination in Daenerys.  He saw her strength.  Ygritte had been kissed by fire and Daenerys _was_ fire.  He’d held Ygritte in his arms as she drew her last breath and it had almost broken him inside when he built her pyre.  Jon didn’t want to repeat that with Daenerys. 

Jon could not think on Ygritte and his time with the Night’s Watch without his mind turning to Maester Aemon.  He remembered coming back from Hardhome to find the old man had died in his absence.  Sam had told him fragments of the maester’s last days.  He’d thought his family lost to him and all that time Jon had been _right there_. 

_Love is the death of duty_.  Jon wondered how much that would prove to be true in the wars to come.  It had been Rhaegar and Lyanna’s truth, in any case.  And perhaps it had been Lord Stark’s truth too.  Had he not sworn fealty to Robert and then concealed a Targaryen in Winterfell?  His love for his sister had surpassed his loyalty, his duty, to Robert.

“Old Nan once said I looked like her.”  Jon flinched slightly at the sound of Arya’s voice.  He had not heard his sister – _cousin_ – approach.  She was almost like a cat in her stealth, though when she pounced Arya had always been a wolf.  “It was years ago.  When Rickon was small.  I said everyone but us looked like mother, and Old Nan told me that I looked like Lyanna.  She got sad, then.”

Jon turned round and faced Arya.  Perhaps it was right that of all Lord Stark’s children, his favourite had always been the one who looked like his mother.  “Your father “ – Jon’s throat burned as he said it like that, no longer was he Ned Stark’s son – “never spoke of her.  He never spoke of my mother neither.  I never – I never thought they were the same person.”

Arya thumped him in the shoulder and Jon winced.  For someone so small and slight, Arya had a great deal of strength. 

“He was your father too”, she told Jon, her jaw set stubbornly.  “I don’t care what Bran says.  You are my _brother_.  My father was _yours_.  You are the son of a Stark just like the rest of us.”

Jon nodded slightly, barely moving, and then Arya had her small arms around him.  Arya had never done what she was told.  She had never conformed.  She had been wild and wilful.  Jon wondered how much more than looks Arya shared with his mother. 

Arya pulled away and looked up at Lyanna’s statue.  “When we were in King’s Landing, father said that I’d marry some great lord or other and have sons who would be knights.  I told him that wasn’t me.  I would’ve run away rather than let him marry me off to some man I didn’t want.”

“You don’t ever have to do that”, Jon told her solemnly.  “No one will ever force Sansa to make a marriage she doesn’t want again.  And no one will ever force you.  I promise.”

“You love her, don’t you?”  Arya asked him. 

“Aye.”  There was little point denying it.  Not after the whispers that had followed them around since their arrival at midday.  Not after the way Sansa had looked between him and Daenerys and muttered Robb’s name.  “I know it’s – “

It’s what?  Jon didn’t know how best to finish that sentence.  Complicated?  A mess?  Wrong?  Vile?  All words he knew many of the current inhabitants of Winterfell would use. 

“I thought all of you were dead once.  The Hound took me to the Twins so he could sell me to Robb and mother.  I saw the Freys kill Grey Wind.  Then he took me to the Vale to try and sell me to Aunt Lysa.  She died a few days before we got there.  When I was in Braavos, I didn’t know if any of you were alive.  She thought all her family was gone.”

“I don’t know how to be a Targaryen”, said Jon.  “I never wanted to be one.  I never wanted to sit on the Iron Throne.  I only – “

_I only ever wanted to be a Stark.  I only ever wanted to be a true-born son of Ned Stark_. 

Arya snorted.  “Daenerys is the only one who will want you to be a Targaryen.  I don’t think anyone else cares.  Sansa…..”  Arya’s lips curled upwards in a smile.  “Sansa says you are the son of a Stark, raised in Winterfell by our father.  Whatever your name, you are one of us.  I know she was my aunt, but I’m not going to call you by that awful dragon name she gave you.  You’re _Jon_.”

Jon appreciated that.  He didn’t know how to be Aegon Targaryen and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be. 

“You remember the stories about Lord Cregan?”  Jon nodded, trying to recall what he’d heard about the Hour of the Wolf, his ancestor’s short time as the Hand of the King.  “He wed two of his granddaughters to their father’s brother.”

“Half-brother”, Jon corrected.  Had Arya just given him and Daenerys her approval?

“I like her.  She reminds me of Visenya.”  Of course, the sister-wives had always been Arya’s favourites, more so than their conquering brother.  “Gendry told me that she saved you.”

“She did”, Jon confirmed. 

He appreciated Arya’s attempts to make it simple, he really did.  But every question he posed to himself brought up several more.  And trying to answer them didn’t quash down the pain he felt in his chest.  It didn’t make him any less Rhaegar Targaryen’s son.  It didn’t make him Ned Stark’s son again.  And it didn’t take back the lies he’d been told his entire life. 

It didn’t help him make sense of anything. 

“We should go back up”, Arya sighed.

“So Bran can tell me more about how my entire life is a lie _?”  So I can see the look of disappointment on Daenerys’s face when she realizes I want to be Jon Snow and not Aegon Targaryen?  So I can be reminded that you and Sansa are not my sisters and Bran is not my brother?_

“He wants to speak to you about the Night King.”

Jon nodded.  _Love is the death of duty_.  Lord Stark’s choice had been to protect and defend, while Rhaegar’s had been selfish.  And Jon was determined to prove himself the product of the man who had raised him rather than the man who had lain with his mother. 


End file.
